NO DOGS ALLOWED, but bears can do whatever they like.

Our latest campground was picked for it’s location, less that 20 miles from Lassen Volcanic National Park. For the last week, I have been posting on Facebook one beautiful scenery shot after another, all featuring this beautiful snow-covered mountain in the background. That mountain is Lassen Volcanic National Park. We picked up brochures and surfed the net for all we could find out. I was checking out the trails and wondering which one I dared suggest to Kerry when he informed me that there were no dogs allowed anywhere in the Park except for the parking lot. The rationale is one I totally agree with. It is a protected area and dogs interfere with that careful balance. They are predators and leave their scent (and too many times more) behind. I agree totally in theory…. but in reality, those trails were calling my name. I also suspected Kerry of praying about it. And the campground was not really our style, a “resorty” type with lots of action and lots of people. Warm showers are pretty much always pay in this dry West, but the bathrooms also were combination locked… which is fine in the day, but the door was not lit well enough for me to see at night so I had to feel my way. The best thing about it was that they saved all the spots on the lake for tent campers. I really liked that. We had quite a few comments on our camper and our boxers there. As a lake, I found it a little ho-hum, certainly not as nice as Lake Hartwell, but I guess when you’re surrounded by as much dust as these guys are, any body of water looks pretty good. (I’m much more enamored by the creeks.) I tried to swim but there was really no place where you didn’t run into underwater brush. I’m not a big fan of underwater brush.

So back to the hikes. Because we knew dogs were only allowed certain places, we picked a rails to trails hike near our campground on Saturday. I wasn’t expecting much because the forest looked a lot the same from the road. However, I was pleasantly surprised. On this slow, flat graveled trail, the landscape changed often, mostly due to the low flora, especially the wild flowers, and the random rocks. I was reminded of those people who landscape their yard without grass using natural plants only. It’s just that I had never walked through the real thing.

And then there was Lassen. I know I’ve used the words beautiful, awesome, incredible and fantastic too much already, but I would just hang my camera out the window and snap and ended up with postcard photographs. It was the contrast of colors that was so appealing… browns and greens, blues and white. It all just meshed together in this creative blend that just blew me away every mile. And the smell of sulphur amid the snow… a pretty unusual place and fascinating for my geology loving husband…. and we did get a bit of hiking. We were able to park the dogs in a very shady spot in the visitor center and went about 15 minutes down the trail. It was so hard to stop! But I waited for Kerry at the bottom and we took a picture at the creek and then I raced back to check on the dogs. (I really noticed the altitude being quite out of breath when I got back to them. I also got to climb another mountain trail where we stopped at the biggest sulfur springs area. Kerry stayed with the dogs while I headed for the top, stopping every two minutes to take a picture. I promised myself that I would stop and turn back when the trail turned. (It came way too soon.) Dogs, or no, Kerry and I could not have done this trail together… but I’m hoping maybe one of my children will take me back someday.

Our next stop was Sugar Pines State Park at Lake Tahoe. We were introduced by signing an agreement to pay a thousand dollar fine if we left any food anywhere but in the bear proof containers, and that included our car and any icebox we had. That was okay by me and I was scrupulous about cleaning out the RV and car of any scented product… but that was when Kerry informed me that we didn’t have water or electricity. I suppose I knew that at one point because we had planned to dry camp in Colorado at the national park there, but I had forgotten… and this was our last stop before Shosha. And it is in the 90’s and no shade during the day and in the 40’s at night. More importantly than that, there are two toilets in the women’s bathroom (a toilet and a urinal in the men’s) for about 100 campers. On top of that, Lake Tahoe is well on the beaten path… a bit like Myrtle Beach or Gatlinburg. We did have a nice dip in a creek (I say we, and of course mean me and the dogs) on a dog approved path, but we gave in and called Shosha and asked her could we pretty please come a little early. She said she would love that which we are not going to question. Of course, it is the hottest week on record there, but that is where Shosha is so who cares about the weather there.

We are also thinking that we might need to wash a few clothes there. We have been living in a dust pit for a week now where washing anything, us or clothes, only lasts about 15 minutes.

So dogs allowed and bears are being left behind. Sacramento, here we come.